11 Things I Love About You…

February 13th, 1999

Ben and I were both at the same young adult retreat and the evening activities were miniature golf and go-carts. I didn’t really know anyone my age but I knew a few familiar faces and hung around them for the majority of the weekend. As I stood in line for the the go-carts and as people started pairing off to go in to the cars, I started to realize that I didn’t have a partner. As my friend Hanna started to board her car with her friend Dooley, she said, ‘Here! Ride with Ben. You’ll like him!’ I was mortified!! This dude was hot. I mean HAWT, and I was intimidated and not in my normal confident go get ’em attitude. We both just looked at each other and knew that this would be the most uncomfortable ride of our lives. And it was!! We swear to this day that we had the slowest car out there. Or maybe he just drove slow so he could enjoy the view. Know what I’m sayin??? 😉 That ride was just the beginning for us.

We dated long distance for a while as he lived in Tucson and I lived in Phoenix. We visited, wrote, called and took advantage of any time we could spend together. Little did either of us know that 11 months after we met, we would be married on January 8th, 2000 and starting our family.

Our marriage has not always been perfect but Gods love and grace for us and the promise we made to each other has been. As the years go by we are more in love, more in sync, the arguments are minimal and we are each others best friends above all else.

We have been blessed with two beautiful daughters and a son and I could not have written a better story myself.
As we celebrate 11 years of marriage today I want to take a moment and share the 11 things I love about Ben:

1. I love that you support every idea I come up with. Even if I never see it through, you never tell me I can’t do it.
2. I love how gentle, sweet and encouraging you are to our daughters. They are so lucky to call you dad.
3. I love how playful, tender and tough at the same time you are with our son. He is only two but is learning first hand from you what it means to be a good man.
4. I love that you encourage me to be at home with the kids even when I feel like I should be ‘contributing’. You remind me that I am exactly where I need, you need and our kids need me to be.
5. I love how hard you work to support our family. I will never take that for granted.
6. I love that you love my cooking.
7. And I love that you can FINALLY admit you’re a picky eater. 😉
8. I love how hard we laugh with and at each other.
9. I love your passion to learn more about Gods plan for us as a family and doing whatever it takes to follow it.
10. I love it that you still smile and look at me the way you did when we were first dating.
11. I love you for taking a go-cart ride with me all those years ago 🙂

You are an amazing man and I’m honored to call you mine. Here’s to a lifetime of more memories.